Knickers nicker, In-line Maniac, Suggestive Sausages and a Farracitro

I am having real problems with the internet today; my diagnostics say everything is fine; I have a connection speed of 4.8 Mbps but web pages are taking ten minutes to load.

I think the server may have swine flu.

First up (hopefully):

1,000 underpants

Officers raided 56-year-old Michael Wolker's flat after he was stopped leaving a club with three pairs of used underpants in a bag.

And found more than 1,000 pairs.

Wolker also had more than 100 pairs of swimming trunks, they were all evidently in use, but had been washed and neatly stacked away,' a police spokesman said.

Wolker denies stealing the underwear, claiming he obtained them over the internet and from car boot sales.

Yeah right, most men have about seven pairs (not me of course I have at least, well eight pairs), and if they are single maybe less than that.

Because as the old adage goes “you can only wear one pair at a time”.

There's always one

Wearing specially designed in-line skates, Dirk Auer made the attempt at the Trips Drill theme park in Stuttgart, Germany.

Reaching speeds of 90 kph, Mr Auer skated the 860 metre track in just over one minute.

This was a very dangerous stunt because there were so many factors to consider," said the 36-year-old, who conquered the rickety ride last weekend.

"The roller caster is wooden and so unlike rides made from iron and steel there was always a chance of the odd nail or screw that would not be entirely flat.

"If the skates were to catch a stray nail then I could have fallen and I would almost certainly have died."

Spending two months planning the outrageous stunt, Dirk also designed and made the monster skates, which took him a total of 110 hours work.

He already holds the world record for reaching speeds of 307 km/h as he was dragged along behind a Porsche GT2 and has raced down a roller-coaster wearing only his skates.

Dirk, from Gross-Gerau near Frankfurt, is considered to be the most extreme inline-skater in the world.

That is not the description I would use.

Mattesons moral dilemma

A sexually suggestive ad campaign for Mattesons smoked pork sausages has been criticised by the advertising watchdog.


The innuendo-filled radio adverts for Mattesons sausages asked listeners where they would like to "stick it".

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld complaints that the ads should not have been aired when children were likely to be listening.

The ASA ruled that the four adverts, broadcast on Forth One, Clyde Radio and Real Radio, must no longer be aired at times when children were likely to be listening.

It is obvious where you would “stick it” isn’t it?


And finally:

Ferracitro

Yet more maniacs have decided to cross a Citroen 2CV with a Ferrari – and produced a bread van which can travel at 180mph.

The bizarre hybrid took the pair five years and cost more than £150,000 to put together.

They took the chassis and engine of a speedy Ferrari F355 Berlinetta and combined it with the body of a 12bhp Citroen 2CV Fourgonnette bread-van.

And they stuck the iconic prancing pony logo on the front above the famous Citroen double chevron emblem.

The result of their efforts is a striking vehicle that can accelerate from 0 to 60mph in less than five seconds.

The car was put together by Nicolo Lamberti, 35, and Milko Dalla Costa, 51, who run the Italian Nimik rally team.

Mr Lamberti said they found the Ferrari at an "interesting price" and decided to modify it.

They had the idea to combine it with the 2CV after seeing it abandoned in the back of a garage in Turate, in Northern Italy.


That is a lot of bread for well, a bread van.

Angus

Angus Dei politico

Angus Dei-NHS-THE OTHER SIDE

Saturday Snippets

For those of you that are into it the Telegraph has published the sideboard’s Cabinet’s expenses in full.

Enjoy!

This Tika masala sauce is a bit lumpy, that’s because there is a dead mouse in it, Cate Barrett, from St Austell, bought the jar of Extra Special Tika Masala sauce from a local Asda store.

She discovered the rodent after she emptied the jar and noticed that the sauce was "a bit lumpy".

She discovered it was a mouse after she "got out a spoon and decided to give it a poke".

She said: "I felt sick to be honest.

"I'm not particularly squeamish; I'm a single mum who works in a children's nursery, so if you can cope with kids, you can cope with most things. But it put us off our dinner, that's for sure."

Yum Yum!

Draconian or what?

A judge has condemned a "grotesque" waste of taxpayers' money spent on prosecuting teenager Larissa Wilkinson for allowing her 18 month-old niece to drop a sweet wrapper.

Miss Wilkinson, 19, was charged with depositing controlled waste after toddler Lila Henderson dropped a mint wrapper out of her car window as she was driving in Huddersfield, West Yorks.
After three appearances at a magistrates' court, and one at a crown court, Judge Roger Scott stepped in to prevent the case going before a jury at an estimated cost of £10,000.

The judge said: "It's the most inappropriate set of proceedings I've personally ever, ever seen and it's a fantastic waste of community charge payers' money.

"This was a grotesque misuse of the powers of the authorities to proceed on indictment for dropping a sweet wrapper."

Miss Wilkinson, an art student, was prosecuted by Kirklees Council in a case which has taken 15 months to process through the courts.

The judge, who told the defendant to sit in the witness box rather than the dock at Bradford Crown Court, asked prosecutors: "Can you explain to me why this charge was ever brought against this lady - she has dropped a single sweet wrapper?

"Is it controlled waste? I've looked it up and I don't see how you could possibly argue that it was controlled waste.

"I cannot for the life of me see it's appropriate."

After handing Miss Wilkinson a caution, which she accepted, the judge added: "I hope you've enjoyed your day in court.

"I had previously had three appearances at the magistrates' court and this one appearance at crown before anybody realised how daft it was."

A spokesman for Kirklees Council said that the judge's words had "been noted" but stood by the decision to prosecute.

"There can be no doubt that rubbish thrown from vehicles contributes greatly to the defacement of our streets and is a problem local authorities need to address," the spokesman said.

"Miss Wilkinson was charged with an offence because by virtue of Section 33 (5) the person in control of a vehicle is liable for waste thrown from that vehicle whether they threw the waste out or not.

"It was always the intention of the local authority that this matter would be dealt with in the magistrates' court.

A cupid stunt award goes to Kirklees Council for being so anal.

If you go down to the Dungeon today:

Take or a mattress to fall on or a bucket because Warwick Castle's dungeon attraction has made 15 people faint and one person vomit.

And the cause of all this angst? “Visitors to the medieval dungeon are greeted by fake blood and life-size models of victims on the rack. Guides demonstrate how prisoners used to have their tongues ripped out.”

An official commented: "If there are many more incidents like these then the dungeon will have to be toned down."
Publicity for the dungeon attraction refers to "decaying bodies, chanting monks, torture implements and execution."

Nice day out.

No knickers in Ho Chi Minh City, the authorities in the Vietnamese capital have banned window dummies displaying underwear, “The models must no longer be visible from shop fronts under the rule controlling various forms of advertising in southern Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, the Phap Luat Ho Chi Minh City newspaper said on its website.

"Putting the mannequin somewhere that people in the streets cannot see it is OK," the report quoted local official Le Quang Vinh as saying.”

Shame that, window shopping used to be interesting.

And finally:

Pirates were democrats Pirates have been long maligned and cursed as thieves and sea dogs, but according to one economist they formed vanguard capitalist democracies, with constitutions, elections and healthcare plans.

The economics professor at George Mason University outside the US capital says he has found evidence that some 18th century pirates wrote down rules and principles which foreshadowed the US Constitution by decades.
"We have three or four surviving accounts of pirate constitutions," Leeson said.

It seems that the Somali pirates are may be starting to replicate the system that made yesteryear's Caribbean pirates among the most successful criminals in history.

"They are starting to develop some private systems of governance that are similar to what early 18th century pirates had," said Leeson.

"They now have a travelling pirate court for example; they have created some rules to prevent theft and violence. You have enough members of the modern Somali pirate community to really make a society, an outlaw society."


Oh well that’s all right then if they have rules about hijacking ships and crews.




Angus

NHS Behind the headlines

Angus Dei politico

Angus Dei-NHS-THE OTHER SIDE